From Andrew Hamilton’s Innov8 shop, we’ve got this Friday talk series, which will feature one of the CTE’s founding Board members, Dr. Cathy Horn. Here’s a description of the series:

The Innov8 series highlights and promotes academic innovation at UH and beyond in eight-minute talks. These talks are supported by blogs, discussion boards, and links to other resources here, but they stand on their own as well.

We’ve created a truncated format in which our speakers have to do something unusual to get their messages across. We’ve asked them to inspire us. We’ve asked them to tell a story. We’ve asked them to show us how they are helping to create the future of higher education through teaching, research, service, and policy. We’ve asked them to innovate.

For more information, here’s remaining schedule for the talks this year.

Performance What?
Prof. Pavlidis will present pilot results from an ongoing study of stress’s role on exam performance. The study is funded by the National Science Foundation and aims to uncover the source of exam behaviors and to develop orthotic interventions. The emerging picture, although far from complete, is fascinating. Preliminary evidence suggests significant sympathetic engagement only when the level of the exam matches the preparation of the student. Sympathetic excitation is measured via wearable physiological sensors that monitor pulsation, breathing, and transient palm perspiration. It appears that such physiological measurements can assist in the quantification of the exam’s effectiveness, reshaping long-standing performance evaluation philosophies.

Impacting Education through Technology: From Distance Learning to Customized Hands-On Models
This talk will briefly illustrate the diverse strategies we use at UH to engage students with different educational backgrounds, different interests, and different future ambitions. It will chiefly focus on two recent initiatives: (1) the preparation of a valuable distance education tool for sophomore Organic Chemistry Classes, known as eLectures, and (2) the introduction of a new course on Energy and Sustainability that is being co-taught with a UH College of Business professor Joseph Pratt. In addition, I will also discuss how we engage undergraduate students in original research in Chemistry labs, and how I plan to use 3D printing to produce customized models for teaching physical organic chemistry.

High Impact Teaching
Educational research has sought to understand what makes a teacher “good.” This talk will introduce three important lessons from that body of research: high impact teaching; the relevance of asking good questions; and the importance of care. We will discuss how to leverage best empirically based practices to create a classroom where learning occurs and students succeed.

A Comprehensive Program to Boost Student Success in Large Enrollment Introductory Biology Courses
We will discuss a comprehensive program developed to improve student success in our large enrollment freshman level introductory biology lecture courses. We will discuss strategies and activities used to actively engage students in their own learning in the lecture hall, early intervention and advising for struggling students, and our hands-on, group-oriented, peer-led recitation sessions. We will also discuss how we have incorporated study skill lessons into various parts of the curriculum. By providing these enhancements to the basic lecture course structure, we hope to increase the number of students that successfully complete the course and positively impact long term retention and graduation rates.